Unix/Linux System Administration

Goals
The goals of this course are not to teach everything about administering a Unix or Linux system. Instead they are intended to give enough information and confidence to know what should be done on a day to day basis and how to do it.
More importantly, the course gives enough background information so things not covered in detail (or at all) during the course can be tackled because there is an understanding of how the system works.

Structure
The course below is designed to be given at the customer's site to groups of between 1 and about 5 people. It has been structured as four, 2 hour sessions. Preferably they should be taken over two days, two sessions on the first day and two on the next day (or even the next week). Alternatively each session can be taken individually. There is too much to take in during a single day although the subject matter can be reduced to produce 3 sessions which can be taken on a single day.

Where possible a virtual Linux system will be loaded onto the participant's computers. Alternatively the participants can use the Linux or Unix system that they will be administering. If that is not possible the course can be modified to have shorter sessions with "homework" being done on the Unix or Linux systems away from the course. As a general rule we will work with the facilities available at the site; the better the facilities the more progress will be made.

There is more subject matter in each section than can be covered in the time. It will be tailored to suit the requirements of the group taking the course.

Whilst it would be possible to extend this course to include additional modules it is not recommended. It is far better to get to grips with the basics first and then take those additional modules when you have a better idea what it is that you really need to know.

Session I - Background, Internals and Basics
This covers background information about Unix and Linux, how it is organised and how it works. It includes the basic filesystem and commands to access it.

History of Unix and Linux
Where does Unix come from?
Why are there many different versions?
What exactly is Unix?
What is Linux?

The Parts of a Typical System
Kernel
Filesystems
Shells
Xwindows
Applications & Daemons

The Filesystems
inodes & directories
hard & soft (symbolic) links
Permissions
How is it organised on the disk?
Various filesystems

User Interaction - Shell Basics
What is a shell?
i/o channels - redirection & piping
Foreground/Background
Magic filename characters
Environment variables
Running programs
Various shells - sh, csh, ksh, bash, tcsh, etc..

Filesystem commands
Navigation around the filesystem - cd & pwd
What files are there - ls, cat, more
Creating files & directories - mkdir, cp, cat, touch. mv
Removing files - rm, rmdir
Modes, ownerships & groups
Commands: chown, chgrp, chmod, touch

SESSION II - A User's Unix or Linux System
This session goes into more detail on how to use the various commands available in a Unix or Linux system. It covers the basic skills required to use these commands plus configuring a user's environment.

Common Administrative commands
Finding things: grep, find, head & tail
Comparing things: cmp, diff
Information about things: wc, file

Printing
Printing systems
Printing a file

X Windows
What is X windows?
Client/Server!
What is a Window Manager?
Extra goodies: xterm, xman, xcalc, xconsole

Configuring your environment
Start up files
How to configure your shell
How you configure an X program (X resources, command line options)

Regular Expressions
File "expressions"
Editor "expressions"
I'm Stuck! man What if I don't know the name of the command?
Clever shell constructs

SESSION III - The System Administrator's Unix or Linux system
This session covers the rôle of a System Administrator. It includes the usual layout of Unix and Linux systems and also covers using vi and writing shell scripts.

System Admin. & root
What is a System Administrator
Why and how to avoid being superuser
How to become superuser

More on Filesystems & Disks
Preparing the disk
Creating the filesystem & tuning it
Mounting the filesystem
Checking the filesystem
Typical Directory Structure
More on different filesystems

System Admin. jobs
Backup
Installing Software
Setting up users, passwords, groups
More on backups
Building a local network
Monitoring disk space, logs files
Configuring printing
Did I mention backups?

System Admin. commands
Disc space: df & du
What is happening?: ps, kill, top, trace/truss
Timed commands: crontab and the cron/at system
Backups: dump, tar, cpio & dd

Editors
vi, ed, sed, emacs, xedit, ...
Why learn vi?
Principles behind command structure
Basic vi commands
Advanced vi commands
: vi commands

String manipulation commands
perl
awk
sed
tr
expr
test

Writing scripts
Why?
Which language to use?
Basic principles
Things not mentioned earlier (tricks of the trade)

What to do when it blows up in your face
No programs?
Cannot boot?

SESSION IV - Networking and The Rest
This session covers aspects of using a Unix or Linux system in a local network and connecting it to the Internet, including basic security.
Basic networking
Unix is a network
Network protocols
Local networks
Configuring devices and routing

Security
Why?
What is possible
Security Vs Usability
Firewalls

Servers
Remote Access - telnet, ssh
FTP - wuftp, proftp
Email - sendmail, qmail
Web servers - Apache, iPlanet
File servers - NFS, samba

The Rest
Topics relevant to the use to which the Unix box will be put. This can be additional subjects or more detail about subjects covered earlier.